The reason I want to start this article is that I attended a forum yesterday in Georgetown University. Several speakers talked about the past, present, and the future of democratization in Taiwan. The forum is basically designed for undergraduate students. The speakers took most of the time discussing historical events from post-1945 to 2000. The talk was full of policy initiatives. It was as if going back to my undergraduate time when all we talked about was international affairs, foreign policy making, and bilateral relationship. It was quite different from the IR literature I now dedicate to, which is more generalizable and more theoretical. The atmosphere in Georgetown is definitely quite different from other research institutes. It is more policy-oriented, more facts, logical analysis, observational arguments, and less grand theory.
There were some good points presented by the speakers. I would like to elaborate and discuss them. At the same time, I would like to present several more general question about Taiwan's democratization.
John Tkacik, an experienced former US foreign service official, made an insightful point about KMT government's motive to push democratization in late 1980s. The common account for KMT's tolerance on democratic movement is that the rising bourgeois and intellectuals gave tremendous pressure demanding for political reform. But Tkacik took a view from international environment. He pointed out that due to U.S.'s recognition of PRC, KMT's ROC government had a legitimacy crisis. In the past, KMT's legitimacy had been based on U.S.'s recognition of ROC as legitimate Chinese government. Since the U.S. recognized PRC as legitimate Chinese government and withdrew diplomatic relationship with Chiang's government. ROC in Taiwan had lost its most important ally that had supported its rule.
U.S. support was vital to the survival of KMT's regime. Without U.S. defense commitment, the PRC would initiate military strike to occupy Taiwan. In order to maintain U.S.'s support, the regime had to become a true democracy because the U.S. government would find it difficult to defend its support to an authoritarian regime in Taiwan, especially when the main reason to support Chiang's regime- to defend against communist China- was no longer valid. In other word, KMT began democratization in order to earn American support.
This argument is valid because U.S. did struggle to find a legitimacy reason to maintain defense commitment to Taiwan. Being a democracy give U.S. government an excuse to protect its "democratic protege". Therefore, the legitimacy of KMT government changed from a legitimate government of China to a democratic government in Taiwan. Its legitimacy has been based on winning the majority in general elections.
Surprisingly, Tkacik said in the very end of his speech that Ma's KMT government is trying to change this legitimacy back to "a Chinese government" again by approaching mainland China. This statement, in my opinion, is logically problematic. It is hard to say Ma is throwing away democracy as the legitimacy of government. If Taiwan democratized in order to maintain U.S. defense commitment, the same concern should still be there. Why would Ma not worry about U.S. might withdraw its security commitment? According to the argument above, if Taiwan tries to return to authoritarian rule, Ma would lead to his own demise by weakening U.S. support and increasing the risk of PRC invasion. Why would a rational leader ever do that? If Ma's intention, as Tkacik argued during the discussion, is to unify with mainland China, Ma would downgrade himself from the President of state to a provincial leader. Again, this does not seem like a rational action.
Ma's government actually tried hard to maintain its democratic legitimacy. I can offer an example which also appeared during the discussion in the forum. Taiwan government ratified International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights. Signing these two human right conventions did not have substantive meaning since the rule of law in Taiwan has already meet most of the requirements in those conventions. The compliance was merely an action of convenience, which responded to the "selection effect" in the compliance of international law. States select to enter certain treaties when enforcement is easy in domestic law. Taiwan did not need these two conventions to push judicial reform. The reform has already been in place. It would continue even without the two conventions.
There are two reasons why Ma push the conventions to hard and even passed a domestic legislation on how to implement the two conventions. One reason is that he tried to show his commitment to democracy and maintain the legitimacy of his government. It is politically useful for Ma to declare that his government advocate major development of democratic value in international society. It also helped to refute opposition's repeated claim that KMT would bring the authoritarian back to Taiwan.
Second, Ma ratified the conventions in order to earn international recognition. After the Legislative Yuan passed the treaty, Ma's government attempted to submit a copy to UN headquarter like other UN member states did when they ratified the treaty. UN eventually rejected Taiwan's request. But Taiwan government used this opportunity to propagandize its effort to support democratic value and its willingness to fight for equal rights that sovereign states have. The attempt failed as expected, but its propaganda remained. It is worth noting that the submission did not bring positive effect on Taiwan's sovereignty status, it might ironically give UN a chance to show its long term position on this issue by rejection. However, this submission had domestic political effect and potentially politically beneficial to KMT in elections.
Amy Hsieh, a Phd student in George Washington University, gave a brief talk about the development of civil society in Taiwan. She made several excellent point that I would like to share here. She said the rise of civil activist group in Taiwan took place in 1970s. Some groups emerged to urge for political rights, institutional reform, and environmental protection. However, the civil groups in Taiwan is still nascent comparing to the West. They usually lack private funding and therefore depend on government funding. This brings up the potential risk that these group's might lose their independent voice. Civil groups are usually operated by small group of activists. They are not well-organized, short of human resource and material resource, and very limited in sponsoring large scale events.
Taiwan society, as Amy pointed out, rarely has associational relationship embedded in citizen's daily life. This is a good observation of civil society in Taiwan. The most powerful associational organizations in Taiwan are usually religious groups. They deeply infiltrate people's daily life and constitute the basic network of citizens. However, these groups will not contribute to policy debate. They will not comment on government policy like environmental policy, development policy, women right, domestic violence, children education..etc, where as in the West, people usually participate civil groups that would try to impact government policy decision or implementation. They become member of those groups when they are young, they donate, and sometimes participate in the activities initiated by those groups.
The development of Taiwan's civil society needs time and money. It is a problem that a bottom up civil society group is yet to be seen to push political agenda. From my point of view, the interests groups, especially those controlled by industry and corporation, are having effect on government policy and legislature.
Another point presented in the forum I found worth discussing is that democratic institution serves a very important mechanism to coordinate political contention in Taiwan politics. Those who want to push for de facto independence or unification, who took small part in KMT or DPP, have to fulfill their political ideal through a set of democratic rule. In present time, both of those people cannot get majority of Taiwanese to support their political ideal. This is why no party ever push for referendum concerning Taiwan's future. At least up to this year, the majority of Taiwanese still cannot make final decision.
Domestic politic in Taiwan is contentious just like many democracies. In many way, Taiwan shows traits of majoritarian system with centralized unitary government. Eight years of DPP rule turned Taiwan into bi-partisan competition. DPP and KMT has been fighting for simple majority in every election and legislation. The competition is not entirely pleasant process. It often involves perpetrated tactics and sometimes even violence. I would not say that is the democracy I expected. But democracy does have a coordination effect on political conflict.
Most importantly, both parties agree with democratic rule and are willing to play by the rule. For example, there are criticism on Ma's excessive use of policy force to protect Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits Chairman Chen Yun-Lin during his visit. The political contention never stopped throughout his visit. However, DPP leader urged people to vote Ma out of the game to present their dissatisfaction instead of rallying violent protests. This shows people respect democratic value. And democratic institution does have power to constrain and settle down political issues. This is rather valuable in Taiwan politics. Taiwan has gone through authoritarian control when party competition and freedom of speech were denied. The political development over the past 20 years in Taiwan is remarkable. And I believe it is a good system that fits Taiwan's political contention.
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